Rant about the news of the quake
The Quake in China. I remember when it happened, I was on a plane going to Beijing, I landed, got in front of a TV, there was a bit of news that it was a 7.8, but now days later, people still being found alive, the death toll is up to 55,000 with a another 20,000+ not found, and hundreds of thousands injured. The question is how the heck were so many new agencies so content in reporting 5,000 were killed fairly early on. It went up every day to being 10 times+ wrong. I understand the news needs to report what they know, but it's so far off, it's a wonder why they bother reporting anything at all? I'd guess news doesn't get out too well from the smaller and poorer towns who are completely cut off and devastated to the big agencies who then report what they feel fit. Yet imagine... "that car is $10,000. Oops, my "expert guess" was wrong it's $55,000." "Your sister had her baby. Oops, I was wrong, it's quintuplets." All so far off, and this is about deaths, not money or life. I don't think we've ever been that wrong at GR, and it seems hard to be that wrong. But in our need to know numbers about everything, as in How much is this? How many are there? etc etc, we're forcing the news to feed us crap as well. It goes both ways. No one is right, but I'm sitting shaking my head as to how it went from 5k to 55k in a week. That's my tiny rant and it helps nothing, except hopefully making people a little more thoughtful about figures.